About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

Followers

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

Purity And Power: Chris Trotter Critiques John Armstrong's Advice To The Greens.

Keep Your Eyes On The Prize: Mr Armstrong counsels the Greens to make the same Devil’s Bargain that he has been forced to accept. Right and wrong, good and evil, in the revised edition of the Armstrong political gospel, haven’t the slightest purchase in contemporary governance.

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY COLUMN from John Armstrong! There have
been many this year, but his latest (10/9/14) stands out because of the
amoral cynicism underpinning the writer’s political analysis.

“The Greens face an old dilemma”, opines the NZ Herald’s Chief Political Commentator,
“remain pure but powerless. Or go centrist and compromise and get things done.”

A dilemma? Only if you believe that remaining true to your
ideals is in any sense disempowering.

But there is absolutely no historical warrant for the
suggestion that strongly held beliefs lack power. In fact, history testifies to
precisely the opposite conclusion.

“Here I stand!” Martin Luther told the Holy Roman Emperor,
“I can do no other.” How different the history of Protestantism would have been
if he had not. “Keep your eyes on the prize – hold on!”, sang the civil rights
protesters in the face of the most appalling racial violence. How different the
history of the United States would have been if they had decided to “go
centrist and compromise and get things done.”

Why didn’t Armstrong remind his readers that although
political movements like the Greens often have to wait many years to see their
ideals accepted and their policies implemented, principled patience is almost
always rewarded? He is, after all, a member of the generation that struggled to
end New Zealand’s contacts with South Africa; withdraw its troops from Vietnam;
end nuclear testing in the Pacific; and decriminalise homosexuality. With those
(successful) examples before him, why did he feel the need to construct this
false “remain pure”/ “get things done” dilemma for the Greens?

The answer almost certainly lies in the context of Nicky
Hager’s Dirty Politics and the New
Zealand public’s alarmingly blasé reaction to its contents. Armstrong, like
many of his journalist colleagues, reacted with commendable outrage to Hager’s
revelations. Like just about every other Kiwi with a conscience, he was
appalled by the behaviour that had been exposed. His feelings of disgust were undoubtedly
intensified as he reviewed his own experiences as a Press Gallery journalist
and realised just how often and how ruthlessly he and his colleagues had been
played.

The problem for Armstrong and others like him was that
pretty close to a majority of the voting public found nothing very much to get
upset about in Hager’s book. Their opinion of politicians was already so low
that the revelations of Dirty Politics,
if they were accepted at all, were taken as a vindication of their long held
prejudices. No big deal.

What to do? Confronted with the seemingly indefatigable
cynicism of their readers, how should Armstrong and other mainstream media
commentators respond? Should they unload upon these morally inert electors the
full weight of their journalistic scorn? Should they openly challenge their
fitness to cast something as precious as a ballot? Seriously, if these “so
what” National supporters are able to absorb, with apparent equanimity, the
news that their democracy is riddled with political cancer, then can they even
be called citizens?

It’s happened before, this unexpected and, therefore,
shocking disjuncture between the judgement of journalists and the perceptions
of their readers, listeners and viewers. The most famous example is the US news
media’s reaction to the police riot that erupted at the Democratic Party
Convention in 1968. Mayor Daley’s brutal Chicago cops not only billy-clubbed
and maced and tear-gassed the young demonstrators outside the Convention, they
also attacked Convention delegates, trashed one of the presidential candidates
headquarters, and beat-up any journalist foolhardy enough to attempt to report
their illegal rampage.

Outraged, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger of the New York Times, Katherine Graham, of the
Washington Post and Newsweek and many other publishers
joined with the heads of the major television networks in telegramming Mayor
Daley and protesting that newsmen “were repeatedly singled out by policemen and
repeatedly beaten … the obvious purpose was to discourage or prevent reporting
of an important confrontation between police and demonstrators which the
American public as a whole has a right to know about.”

But the American public didn’t want to know. In the words of
historian, Godfrey Hodgson:

“Almost to a man, the journalists had been shocked by what
the police did. To their astonishment, the polls showed that a large majority
in the country were shocked by the demonstrators, and sympathetic to the
police. Nine out of ten of the seventy-four thousand letters sent to Mayor
Daley in the first two weeks after the convention, commended the police. And
bumper stickers blossomed across the country: WE SUPPORT MAYOR DALEY AND HIS CHICAGO POLICE.”

It was to be another six years before the resignation of
President Richard Nixon finally convinced a majority of Americans that people
in authority are not always worthy of their support; that, sometimes, the
journalists are right.

And maybe that will happen here, too. Maybe, in the months
ahead New Zealanders will find out just how deep the cancer has burrowed into
the bones of the nation. But, in the meantime, the advertisers are not going to
spend money purchasing time and space in media businesses that excoriate their
customers. Like the American journalists of 1968, the New Zealand journalists
of 2014 have little choice but to adjust their ethics to fit those of a
majority which long ago forgot the meaning of the word.

And that is why, in today’s column, Mr Armstrong counsels
the Greens to make the same Devil’s Bargain that he has been forced to accept.
Right and wrong, good and evil, in the revised edition of Armstrong’s political
gospel, haven’t the slightest purchase in contemporary governance. If you want
to “get things done”, then compromise is the only game in town.

The only problem with that advice, John, is that once Russel
Norman, Metiria Turei and the Greens start compromising, how will they know
when to stop? Purity, once abandoned, is very hard to recover. And, if Dirty Politics has taught us anything at
all, it is that power without purity is Democracy’s most dangerous enemy.

This essay was posted
on Bowalley Road and The Daily
Blog on Wednesday, 10 September 2014.

8 comments:

1. There is no such thing as political purity if you want to govern or help governing.2. Greens became centrist some time ago, and have always been middle-class.3.Journalists and politicians both get a pretty bad trust rating from the general public.4. Journalists might have a low opinion of politicians, but they generally need them. And politicians need journalists – though not quite so much as they used to given they have people like Slater.

History has shown that when Green parties finally achieve office (unlikely for the NZ lot this time), they get a rude awakening as to practical realities vs their untested ideals. The examples you mentioned all involved compromise.Incidentally, it's this 'holier than thou' attitude of the Greens that really annoys many (most, if polls are believed).Your columns often contain praise of the left's alleged clever compromises.

On another note MORE THAN 80% of men don't want Cunliffe's Labour. This is what comes of apologising for your gender.

Chris-spoken exactly as someone who has always been on the sidelines. Politics is the art of compromise and has always been so, that may be sad but its true. It's only those who write about politics that can afford to be so pure.

In the 1972 United States election voters had the choice between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. McGovern promised to get the United States out of Vietnam in less than a year (might have been six months). 48 states were won by the Republicans and I bet a good number of Republican voters saw their sons killed, wounded or mentally stuffed up by the war after that election. Which just goes to show how often people don't vote for their own best interests.

Hi Chris this is slightly off topic but does have some connection to the type of capitalism we want.

I had assumed that the Corn laws debates were only about free trade. But recently I have done some reading and it seems it was also about the fight against the rentier class.

Trade Unions were involved and this may be evidence that I was not aware of that trade unions made common cause with business (productive capital) to successfully fight the rentier class (unproductive capital).

That this was one of the shoulders that our current liberties and freedoms stand on.

Check the below links out.

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/cornlaws/acll.htm

"Sheffield's Anti-Corn-Law movement got more support from the artisan classes than from the middle classes. Elliott complained of middle-class apathy. Working-class hostility to the Corn Laws survived in Sheffield's trade unions.

In 1833, Trade Unions in Sheffield organised an anti-Corn-Law petition and in January 1839, Sheffield's middle classes re-established the Anti-Corn-Law Association. In September 1839 the Trade Unions decided to be non-political. They dissociated themselves from Chartism and Elliott abandoned Chartism because of Sheffield's advocacy of physical force. In November the Trade Unions agreed to support the anti-Corn-Law campaign. At the November meeting, Harrison of the edge tools trade said,

If the Corn Laws were abolished it would give the working man greater strength to resist other evils... Considering these things ... they were of the opinion that if they could overcome the Corn Laws first, other evils would fall before the persevering stroke of those who struggled for liberty.

The Anti-Corn-Law League gave great prominence to this meeting."

This topic is discussed with Peter Nunns -economist at this blog here http://transportblog.co.nz/2014/09/09/better-cities-mean-a-wealthier-new-zealand/#comment-126868 (this is my last comment)

P.S. Current 'free trade' agreements are spin in my mind. They are simply trade deals. They are negotiations on the rules of trade between two or more countries. Each side wants the rules that favours them the most.

So in general I support more trade over less, but I am not a naïve believer in some free trade utopia.....

Sorry I didn't realise that you were an expert on aphorisms-when I look up 'politics is the art of compromise' it clearly has been used. I do realise that the left usually considers itself so pure and 'correct' that compromise is out of the question so it would be interesting to see Labour and Greens try to compromise but I think most of us will just imagine and shudder and forgo the actual experience.